Tyler Cohen:

A bursting real estate bubble set off the Japanese recession of the 1990s, which deepened as ailing banks languished. It took Japan’s economy more than a decade to resume steady, noticeable growth.

Will this happen to the United States? Probably not, but we may face a protracted process of recovery, stretching longer than the two or so years usually required to climb out of recession.

The fundamental problem in the American economy is that, for years, people treated rising asset prices as a substitute for personal savings.

From the archive:

Are Americans suffering from an undue sense of entitlement?

Somebody said to me the other day that the entitlement we need to get rid of is our sense of entitlement.

From last month:

Given a Shovel, Americans Dig Deeper Into Debt

And further back, we have "Memorable Quotes from Mystery Men":

The Shoveller: We're not your classic heroes. We're the other guys.
The Shoveller: God's given me a gift. I shovel well. I shovel very well.
The Shoveller: We struck down evil with the mighty sword of teamwork and the hammer of not bickering.

David Brooks, from June:

The United States has been an affluent nation since its founding. But the country was, by and large, not corrupted by wealth. For centuries, it remained industrious, ambitious and frugal.

Over the past 30 years, much of that has been shredded.

Finding the Mess Behind the Mess